Image: FromSoftware
More details about the Elden Ring’s developer’s next game have surfaced.
Having a new FromSoftware game announced so soon after the release of Elden Ring feels like a dream, but it’s happening. The renowned developer behind Dark Souls and Bloodborne recently unveiled its next title at The Game Awards last weekend: Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon. Interestingly, the game will mark a departure from the ‘Soulsborne’-like gameplay formula FromSoftware’s recent games have been built upon.
Armored Core 6’s announcement came somewhat out of the blue, considering the mech series has been dormant since 2012’s Armored Core 5. This was around the time Dark Souls began to take off as a franchise, and FromSoft pivoted into fleshing out its trademark gameplay loop of frustrating deaths and glorious boss fights. The Armored Core franchise may have fallen off the wayside in the years since, but make no mistake - it has its fans still, having spanned 13 mainline games and seven spin-offs. This new entry is meant to be as newcomer-friendly as possible.
However, don’t expect the game to play anything like a Souls game. During an interview with IGN, FromSoftware’s president Hidetaka Miyazaki stressed that the development team has made no, “conscious effort to try to direct [Armored Core 6] towards more Soulsborne-type gameplay." Instead, the team went back to look at what made Armored Core so special and make a game that harkens back to that. That means that Armored Core 6 won’t play anything like Elden Ring - it’s an action-packed mech game through and through.
Miyazaki adds, “We wanted to take the assembly aspect, assembling and customizing your own mech — your AC — and then being able to exact a high level of control over the assembled mech. So we wanted to take those two core concepts and reexamine those in our modern environment.” The Elden Ring director goes on to say that customising and assembling your own unique mech will play a huge part in this sequel. Unlike the Souls games, it won’t play out in a semi-open setting filled with campfire-themed save points. It will be mission-based, with each mission rewarding players currency to buy new parts to upgrade their mechs.
Armored Core 6 will also have a separate multiplayer PvP mode, but we doubt that it will feature invasions in the vein of the Souls games. The game’s director Masaru Yamamura describes its combat as such: “For this title, by continuing to attack even the strongest enemy, the force of impact can break the enemy's posture and inflict a large amount of damage—a critical hit. This is the starting point for the slow and fast speed change of the battle, and when combined with long-range firefighting and close-range melee combat, the enemy and his machine engage each other violently, creating a more aggressive and dynamic battle that only mechas can engage in."
Yamamura then confirms that Armored Core 6 will be challenging with, “intense and tough mecha battles,” depending on how you build your mechs. The game launches sometime in 2023, featuring a new story disconnected from the rest of the franchise, which means that you don’t need to play all 20 games to understand why these robots have it out for each other.